Eric Garay

I’ve been stretched pretty thin as of late more mentally than physically. When I get like this, some regular-joe play time is in order. After unplugging with some physical activities like working out and bbq’n, it was pretty easy getting back in to some of the cool tech toys that make PCs fun.

Enter, the Patriot Memory Viper II 2000 MHz (GT-RT10-VR4-R32-WRX-STi-OMFG-NOS) Triple Channel Memory. Ok, you got me. It doesn’t really use NOS to run fast, but you’d think so with the way it operates on a humble little ASRock X58 Extreme motherboard.

Right from boot, the motherboard insisted on running the memory at 1066 MHz (via BIOS and CPUZ) which is actually 2133 MHz because it’s double data rate RAM. That’s as far as the RAM would go with this BIOS which is the norm with the X58 Chipset and Intel Core i7 processors.

Between the Auto overclocked settings in the BIOS and memory, SANDRA’s memory benchmark test posted 34,654 MB/s (or, 34.6 GB/s) almost consistently. You can see on the stickers that these run stock 8-8-8-24 memory timings. Between those timings and 2000 MHz, you can get a lot of things done sooner than later. That bandwidth makes for extremely quick Photoshop and/or video rendering.

On the non-technical side of the things, the new Viper II memory sinks are pretty dang nice. The original Viper resembled fangs which were great for an intro. The Viper II sinks return to a more contemporary, well manicured fin design.

If you’re looking for something a little less elite to save some cash, check out their new Patriot Gamer Series. The timings are a little higher, but they accomplish the same objective in any video game. The memory comes in Dual and Triple Channel flavors supporting AMD AM2 and AM3, as well as Intel Core 2 and Core i7.

Alright, enough blabbering. It’s time to load up World at War or Left for Dead. This Zotac GTX295 needs heating up!

Even though nVidia released newly revised GTX 275 and 285 core revisions using the 55nm GPU process, there’s still some ‘cream of the crop’ GTX 260s floating around. I had the pleasure of testing one this last week that clocked in with the same frequencies and higher using the overclocking software.

As you can see, the ASUS ENGTX260 Matrix videocard is much nicer looking than any of the stock looking GTX 260s around. Its factory overclocked settings are part of the reason for the aftermarket cool has been used. Once the frequencies surpass the GTX 285’s, there’s no way an nVidia reference cooler can get the job done without some fanatical 50dB noise.

The bottom line is pretty simple though with this card. Install the card, drivers, software, and begin overclocking as you see fit. Put it this way, the memory frequencies could go higher, but the software levels off at a solid 2500 MHz!

Personally, I love a $200 videocard that can out clock the next card up especially if it looks great. About the only thing I might have changed about it is by adding a little LED or two to show off the aftermarket cooler. If you’re going to show off, it should be really shown off! Now, where did I put that LN2 GPU pot?